Tag: thirty-something

I have a bottle of wine chilling in my freezer. I will need at least a glass of it to make it through this post.

Some of you have reached out to me since my post on depression, asking why I’m not writing much anymore, why I’ve dropped off of the WordPress radar. I wonder the same thing sometimes. Honestly? I’ve wanted to write. I’ve had words upon words ready. Ready to talk about the two horses I’ve rescued since my 30th birthday. Ready to tell you about the duckings that were hatched by a turkey hen then raised in the house, culminating in this little one wandering upstairs on her own in search of the bathtub.

I’ve wanted to tell you about the creatures I’ve lost. The ones I’ve found. The everyday beauty of life in this little corner of the universe. I’ve considered writing again about the depression that I’ve struggled with on and off for most of my adult life. Sometimes the words have seemed almost ready to spill out.

But then I would start writing.

And I would stop writing.

Because, deep down, everything I was starting to write felt deeply inauthentic. What I wanted to say and what I felt I could say, or maybe should say, were two different things.

The most pressing issue in my world wasn’t something that I was ready to talk about, and it seemed wrong to pretend otherwise. No matter how much I love the horses I rescued, no matter how funny it seemed to be hauling a pet chicken to the vet in a cat carrier in the back seat of my Jetta, no matter how much my llamas made me smile, it all paled in comparison to the fact that my marriage was falling apart. That things had been crashing down around me for the better part of two years. That things weren’t ok, and that they hadn’t been for a long time.

I promised myself when I started this blog that I would be authentic, that I wouldn’t just be another voice on social media sharing only the good stuff and none of the bad, a voice making readers feel like everyone else has their shit together while they don’t. For the most part, I think I’ve succeeded in some level of balance there, but divorce?

I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know how to tell my story without telling parts that don’t entirely belong to me. I didn’t know where authenticity just became whining. Mostly though? I really didn’t want to admit that this was happening to me. I didn’t want to see it in black and white. I didn’t want it to be real.

But, I guess whether or not it’s what I want, this is what’s real:
Two years ago, almost to the day, the most important relationship in my life started to unravel.
November of 2015 marked the worst month of my life, and I spent the next year and a half fighting to leave that month behind, move past it, and save my marriage to the man I loved more than anything else regardless of how that relationship had hurt me.
Six months ago, Jeremiah moved out. Not long after that, he sat across the couch from me and told me that he would never “stay here and make himself miserable.”
And now? Well, he just signed the papers, which I guess is why I’m finally admitting that this is all real. It’s happening. There is no magical marriage fairy on her way to wave a wand and fix things.

A little over six years ago, I married one of the best men I had ever met. Currently, I am divorcing one of the best men I’ve ever met.

That is the truth of my life at the moment.

Meanwhile, the world spins madly on, and I’m still here, still managing 50 something animals every day, working an office job, and trying to remember that “I can do hard things.”

Today, I felt the weight of all of this pressing on me and I changed it to “I can do hard things…for an hour…in my pajamas” before heading out to take care of evening chores.

The ranch is still here. I am still here. I am not going anywhere, and neither is this blog.

This isn’t really an announcement to most of those who are close to me. Most I’ve told. Many have heard it through the proverbial grapevine, which I realized this Christmas when cards started showing up from family to “Cherity” and not “Cherity and Jeremiah.” Even some of my readers have hinted at his absence in my posts, or the fact that he seemed to always be gone, but I know this will catch some of you by surprise. In a weird way, this whole thing caught me by surprise too.

They say that “life happens while you’re planning for it,” and I guess that’s true. There is no cultural road-map for thirty, childless, divorced, and managing a farm–no psychology textbooks for that life stage—yet, it’s where I find myself.

Life is tricky, and divorce makes it trickier.

So, what now?

I keep asking myself the same thing.

I think, on some level, admitting what’s going on just opens the door for me to write about a hundred other things that touch on this subject without feeling like a fraud. I think it opens the door for me to be a little more honest and authentic in my writing. I think, as much as anything, maybe I’m just putting this down in words so that, maybe, someone out there going through the same thing might feel a little less alone.

And I think, for now, that’s all I’m going to say about it. For now, this is enough.